Gotta Love the Mad Ones

...the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

This Kerouac quote reminds me of how truly odd I am. Or more specifically, my reaction to it is what seriously raises the needle on my oddness-meter.

When I read it, I instinctively take in a deep breath and feel as if the words ride the waves of my breath and fill my entire body. After savouring each word and how they create unique meaning as they stand shoulder-to-shoulder, I exhale them and then must read the quote again. And then again. And sometimes again. As many times as necessary for me to get a “word” fix from it.

But the weirdness begins when I think about why I am so infatuated with this combination of these particular words. Together they create a manic, magical swirl of energy, passion and personal (as opposed to political) plans for revolution and creative world domination.

I want these words to represent me. But they don't, not really. In fact, I so relish times of solitude, silence, and times when productivity is not a key piece of the equation that I have often wondered about my aptitude for maintaining relationships. How will someone ever understand how important my time alone is to me?

But I desire, even crave connections with people who live these words out loud. My closest and dearest girlfriend. A sister. A son.  A new friend.

These people ignite a passion that already exists within me. Next to them, I can be odd, uncommon and burn brightly, magically even with a touch of manic-ness about the whole thing. With them, I believe in the power of revolution.  I feel as if I am finally hanging out with the cool kids. And that I can dance as if no one is watching.  I somehow give them permission to give me permission to have fun for its own sake. 

Then, I hit a wall of over-stimulation. It's all a bit too much and I need to breathe in the commonness of solitude. Boredom calls to me, invites me to crawl into bed with him and spoon until I yawn, exhale and fall deeply asleep, safely within his embrace.

Once rested and re-charged, I awake, stretch, yawn and read this quote and again feel an overwhelming need to see my friends who never say a commonplace thing!   Mad for the mad ones, go figure.

How Not to Feel

If feelings are meant to be felt, why do I work so hard to avoid just feeling them?  What do I imagine will happen if I feel them fully?  Will they consume me?  Weaken me?  Define me?  Are there 'good' and 'bad' feelings and I only want to feel the 'good'?

Why do I repress my anger or fly into a fiery rage when both are methods of avoiding simply feeling angry?

Why do I fill my alone time with noise or distraction to avoid the feeling of loneliness?

Why do I rush to bring arousal to an ecstatic conclusion instead of allowing the feeling of desire to exist?

Why do I downplay my accomplishment and success to avoid feeling any sense of self-congratulation?

If I trust anything, it is the present moment, so why can't I give each feeling its due?  Without judgement of good or bad, can I notice anger, loneliness, desire and pleasure in a job well-done without having to avoid, rush to culmination, dismiss or rationalize my way out of it?

Now, in this moment, I feel gratitude.  And hoping that I can make the choice to notice other feelings as they come.  No attachment or aversion.  Only acceptance.    How chill would that be?

Sliver Me Splinters

Most mornings, once I've reluctantly pulled back my heavy comforter still warm with sleep and placed the soles of my feet on the woven mat beside my bed, I yawn and stretch my way over to my window to look outside to the world beyond my curtain. Pushing the curtain aside just a sliver, I look out into the dimness for signs of temperature, precipitation and an overall feel for the day even though it is still in its dawn-most form. This information-at-a-glance that I get helps me to choose a weather-appropriate outfit for the day and to see if I need to set aside a few extra moments to deal with undue amounts of precipitation and still get me to work on time.

Occasionally, despite this pre-emptive gathering of data, I am wrong. Yes, you heard it here first, I can possibly be wrong. Stepping outside my front door, I find that my eyes had in fact deceived me and all is not as it appears – thank you Bill Shakespeare – hence I am at once ill-prepared, ill-equipped to face my day as it really is.

This is not at all unlike other aspects of my life; my life's work, my dreams, my distractions or my current or future relationships. I see one splinter of each and I tend to project the rest. Whatever the small piece that I can see clearly from my second-floor vantage point, I quickly and instinctively make that sliver I see into the whole thing. Being as clever as I am, I can expand that minute part to become either a fantasy of over-the-rainbow proportions or weave it into a beastly bete noire. Little chance of ever being right about much with all that weaving going on, n'est pas?

To counter my tendency to misrepresent the slender sliver-splinters the universe shows me, I've considered noticing parts of the whole, just as they are. Whatever part is in front of me is what is. It doesn't need to mean more than it is. Nor does it need to mean less. The one small part is all I need to know in the moment. No happy-ending. No whole world annihilation.

A detail. A look. A word. A decision. A silence. A question or answer. No more, no less. It is what it is. There's a peace in that. No analyzing necessary. Acceptance over aversion. Deep, deep breath.  

When "No" Means "Yes"

I'm currently reading Gabor Mate's book, "When Your Body Says No"  

It explores the fascinating body-mind connection as it relates to illness and dis-ease.   Very provocative stuff.    Besides being sure that every subsequent eye twitch or unexplained  pain that occur when I'm reading is a yet-to-be-discovered tumour deep within me,  I am compelled by Mate's stories gathered tenderly from the many first-hand relationships he formed with terminally ill patients as their palliative care physician.

The basic premise of the book is that when you do not learn to say 'no', your body will do it for you.    Mate provides account after account of self-neglecting, over-achieving caregivers who refuse to say 'no' even when their body is balking and breaking down right in front of their eyes.   A striking example was Lou Gehrig, known as the "Iron Horse" who continued to play baseball, with a forced smile,  even as his ALS was making it agonizing to do so.

Guilty of decades of my own compulsive overwork, chronic over-achieving, self-neglecting care-giving of others and ignorance of my own body's signals, my decision to learn to say 'no' to many unhealthy patterns in my life is being affirmed in reading this book.    And saying 'no' to other distractions has been the only way that this book found its way off the bookshelf and into my hands.

The undeniable dotted line leading to the too-muchness of never saying 'no' seems to be drawn consistently back to an original woundedness; a deep core, heart-rendering wound.  One we all have.

Despite the focus of this book on illness and learning to say 'no', I've discovered something else, something less no-centred.  In learning to say 'no',  I have seen a desire to start saying a bold 'yes' to life.   Yes to meeting my own needs.   My deep belly breath need for regular solitude, self-care, self-expression through writing and plans for my life-work evolution, emotional intimacy, sexual companionship and erotic exploration.

Work always came first as if I didn't deserve any of above things until all the work was done.  But funny thing, the work was never done.   The reward for a job well done was never awarded to me so the compulsion to keep working kept the cycle going, onward and downward.

How was working myself to exhaustion to the neglect of these areas ever a good idea?

It wasn't.

But now, moment by moment, things are changing.    I'm saying yes to taking a break, a deep breath, listening to my body's wants and needs and knowing that I can say 'yes', if I so choose.  For me, not for what others think should be for me.  'No' has opened the door to 'Yes'. And I cannot wait to see what's on the other side of the door.

I drink green tea, I meditate, I burn candles and I still want to smack someone.

Despite what the title of this post might suggest, I'm not even angry today.  Not even a little bit.  In fact, I'm actually finding more to be grateful for all the time.  A couple of aspects of my job that had the points of their 4-inch heels digging into my last nerve have been resolving themselves organically, my newness to non-doing restlessness has been settling into a gentle hum of cool awareness and I've been seriously digging my morning practice routine.  


But when I read this, I couldn't help but identify with it.  It is so me!   I can be all zenned out from a killer practice followed by an oh-so-mellowness from a seven-minute shoulder-lowering savasana but then, the first person who sits for a millisecond too long at a green light in front of me on the way to work and I read them the road rage riot act from behind my steering wheel.   


The slight difference from pre-green-tea-meditation-candle-burning Danette to this one that sits in the light of the computer screen now, is that the stories I tell myself are getting shorter.   Building my capacity for attention has increased my ability to push pause on the rant button and just notice what is happening.  Instead of drafting a story that turns into a full-length movie to justify my anger, I can just notice what is happening.  That's it.  It's not rocket surgery!  Just notice.


In the face of irritation, petty annoyances or even genuine injustices, why the reactivity and  rage?  What's the point?  The benefit to me or anyone else?  No judgement of good or bad or right or wrong is required.  It is what it is.   The temporary surge of energy that comes from a good rant is just that, temporary, fleeting.  And yet it becomes a building block for more stories, more reactions, more judgments and less peace.


So I drink green tea, I  meditate, I burn candles and I still occasionally want to smack someone because I'm human.  But when I choose to simply notice the deep desire to smack and not judge it, then I arrive alive and a little less maniacal.  




  

It’s Been One Week

One week ago today was the first day of my life with only one job (technically only one source of income) so I thought it would be a good time for check in.

In the past seven days, I spent at least 45 hours at my day job, 4 of the past 7 days playing overnight nursemaid to a friend who is in post-surgery discomfort, received training for my CPR/ First Aid Certificate and chose a theme and designed all the decor for a major Open House evening happening in a few weeks at my school.  This involved selecting colour schemes, creating displays and maps, outlining and distributing duties, ordering props and backdrops and shopping for the best deals on decor items.

I didn’t dislike any of the work I was doing.  For the most part, I like my job, care deeply for and was honoured to help my post-op buddy, love learning new things (and getting certified) and always enjoy event planning because it gives me the chance to flex my floral designer muscles, the work I trained for and played at before stumbling into teaching.

But, in the end, the hours I used to spend preparing for and teaching yoga and intentionally removed to experience more non-doing were immediately consumed with other things.   Times just sitting and being were filled with an uncomfortable restlessness and a desire to self-medicate with mindless screen time.

Apparently non-doing in is not in my body’s vocabulary.  Why wouldn’t I find this challenging?

I don’t recall a time in my life that I wasn’t working.  As a child, doing daily chores around the house was as expected as doing your homework or bathing.  Even during summer holidays, there was a feeling of “getting caught” if someone walked into a room to find you just sitting.  Then, as soon as we were old enough, my siblings and I began delivering newspapers and continued until we were ripe enough to get a job as a clerk or waitress.  When my parents opened a retail flower shop, we all either worked there or at one of the eventual subsidiary companies to our small shop; landscaping or catering.  I recall working as a floral designer creating all the floral designs for a wedding until after midnight, showing up early the next day to decorate the church and the hall, then going home to shower just in time to be a cater-waiter at the very same event.  Exhaustion was never close to the level of tiredness that I felt after those marathon shifts.  

I don’t even have a sense of what my body would do in times of non-doing.  So far, it seems to be going into a systems crash.  When I sit, I need to be distracted or I fall asleep.  Hmmm.

But the news is not all bad.  This week, I’ve been going to bed earlier which makes getting up earlier even easier and gives me some wonderful pre-dawn time for my aerobic prostrations (think spiritual, meditation-based burpee), meditation and yoga practice.  This morning’s 6-minute headstand sent my energy level through the roof and increased my desire to kick this aversion to non-doing right in the ass!

The Odds are on the 7's

In the heart of downtown, with the warmth of a weekend sun streaming through the large windows of the spacious loft/ yoga studio, I was recently certified in First Aid/ CPR, along with a dozen or so other yogis and yoginis in our cooperative, bi-city yoga community.

The First-Aid Instructor was a graduate of Ryerson University in the techie side of Graphic Communication.   But having grown up in the world of life-guarding,  this type of work resonated with her when the post-university, corporate world failed to satisfy.

She's created a great business model of travelling to administer the training to groups at their own site.  This keeps her overhead low since she can keep her equipment at home and she builds the travel costs and vehicular maintenance into the registration. And having her company information on her car means she can write part of it off as advertising.

Not only that but her client base will never become extinct. More and more, basic First Aid training is expected for any service industry that deals directly with the a continuous stream of clients as in all larger retail chains, hotels, schools and the list can and does go on. Not only that, but the re-certification is required every two years. So, as long as she makes the learning experience just that, a memorable experience, then she has an imbedded, never-ending client base. And she did this. We laughed, we learned and we left feeling confident in our ability to make a small difference in the world.

Here's the kicker. That difference we could make is really, really small.  The success rate of applying standard CPR techniques even if they're expertly performed on an unresponsive person, is 7%. That's it. That's all. Only 7%. When you add the use of an AED (defibrillator) then the rate skyrockets to 90% but those devices are not readily available in our concrete jungles yet.

In what universe is 7% good enough for anything? School grades? Company growth? Probability for relationship success?  How many of us would take those odds?

Yet this instructor dedicates her life to ensuring that as many people as possible are prepared for an eventuality that may never occur. She teaches techniques that remove the emotion, the guesswork and the accompanying panic so that perhaps one day , each participant she certifies could possibly be a member of the 7% Club.

Somehow, especially because of the odds, it seems like monumentally important work. Counter-cultural success that combines business saavy with tunnel-vision focus on what truly matters.  Unremarkable hard work for such small return, in one sense, but a viable business that empowers others to connect and support in whatever small way they can.  

Of course, I had a zillion other ideas of ways to expand and manage her client base, include train the trainer sessions and go national. But that's another story.  For now, I'm happy to go against the odds today and feel empowered with my little 7%.

Myth Buster

The myths about work that I've been fed since my days of pablum and pureed peas are swirling in my head like a whirling dervish on crack. 

"Pay first, play later."  "Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight" (thanks Bruce and BNL!).  "No pain, no gain".

I was surrounded by people who worked their "fingers to the bone" and kept their "nose to the grindstone" until they dropped.   Severe illness or death were the only two valid excuses for not working.   It seemed that productivity was next to godliness.

But where's the balance?  And is this the most effective way to be effective at work and living?

Love this little article by Tony Schwartz called "Four Destructive Myths Most Companies Still Live By" that gives me hope for the future of the students I teach.  Schwartz is the president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything.

Read on.  Then sit a spell and let it sink in.

 http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2011/11/four-destructive-myths-most-co.html

CA Meeting Begins Now

My name is Danette and I'm a Consumption-aholic.

Phew, feels good to finally say that out loud!  I admit that I constantly crave something to say, to look at, to touch, to taste, to hear, to smell, to think about, to organize, analyze and prioritize and I need this continuous stimulation until I reach release or fall asleep.  

With this addiction, I wonder how many steps is it gonna take for me to let go and let god?  Geez, I need a drink!